The legal troubles are far from over for Donald Trump. Since Thursday, July 27, the former President of the United States has been the subject of new charges in the case of the negligent management of confidential documents upon his departure from the White House. These new charges come to thicken a case for which a federal trial is scheduled for May 2024 in Florida, in the middle of the Republican primaries for which Donald Trump is favorite.
Federal prosecutors, in a court document released Thursday, blame the 2024 Republican primary front-runner for attempting to have CCTV footage from his Florida residence erased to prevent it from falling into the hands of investigators. . Donald Trump and two of his assistants are accused of having asked an employee of the residence to “delete CCTV images of the Mar-a-Lago club to prevent these images from being handed over” to the justice.
In addition to Walt Nauta, one of the two assistants, Carlos de Oliveira, an employee of this residence, was also charged in this case, reveals this court document. The latter, according to the prosecution, “insisted” with a technician at the residence, saying “that ‘the boss’ wanted this server erased”, shortly after federal investigators requested access to the camera tapes monitoring a room where boxes of documents were stored.
The former president is also accused of having kept an additional secret military document. Donald Trump had shown and described it to several people after leaving the White House as “secret”, “highly confidential” and not “declassified”, according to a recording.
These new charges, responded Donald Trump’s campaign team, “are just another never-ending attempt” by the Biden administration to “harass” his predecessor. The special prosecutor in charge of the case, Jack Smith, “knows that there is nothing in the file”, adds the press release.
The new charges are “ridiculous”, reacted the former president, on the Fox News website, once again accusing his successor Joe Biden of being behind the investigation led by federal justice. “It’s election interference,” he claimed. “If we weren’t way ahead of Biden in a lot of the polls…it wouldn’t happen,” he said.
This new element in the case of the White House archives comes on the day that the Republican billionaire’s lawyers met with representatives of the Department of Justice as part of another investigation into attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, for which he could also be charged.
Donald Trump was previously charged with 37 counts, including “unlawfully withholding national security information”, “obstructing justice” and “false testimony” in the case, to which he pleaded half June not guilty in federal court in Miami.
He is accused of endangering the security of the United States by keeping confidential documents after his departure from the White House in January 2021, including military plans or information on nuclear weapons, in his luxury residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, instead of turning them over to the National Archives.
Earlier Thursday, the former president said his lawyers had spoken to Justice Department officials earlier in the day, ahead of his possible re-indictment in another probe, linked to attempts to overturn his defeat. in the 2020 election.
American media such as NBC had earlier claimed that the lawyers had been informed that they should expect a charge, but the billionaire denied it. “My lawyers had a productive meeting with the Department of Justice this morning, explaining in detail that I did nothing wrong, that I have been advised by many lawyers and that an indictment would only destroy our country more,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
He assured that his lawyers had not been notified of an indictment to come. “Don’t trust fake news on anything!” he added, using his favorite media phrase.
On July 18, Mr. Trump announced that he had received a letter from Jack Smith, informing him that he was personally targeted by the federal investigation into attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. According to several American media, Jack Smith indicated in his letter to Donald Trump that he was targeting him on three counts: conspiracy against the American state, obstruction of a process official and deprivation of rights.
A federal indictment in the 2020 presidential file would therefore be added to that on the White House archives and that, by the justice of the State of New York, for suspicious payments to a former film actress X.
The troubles may not end there for Donald Trump: a Georgia prosecutor must also announce by September the result of her investigation into the pressure he exerted to try to alter the result of the 2020 presidential election in this southern state.
